by Stuart Woods
“I can’t argue with that.” Stone found a parking place and followed her into the courthouse.
40
STONE STOPPED AT the desk before the metal detector and showed his Orchid Beach badge. “I’m armed,” he said.
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” the guard said, “only federal officers can carry inside the courthouse. You’ll have to check your weapon.” Stone gave the man his Walther and got a receipt, then he walked through the metal detector and into a hallway.
His cell phone vibrated. “Hello?”
“It’s Dino. Elaine’s tonight?”
“Sorry, it’s too long a drive.”
“What?”
“I’m in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
“What the fuck are you doing way the hell out there?”
“I’m with Holly. It’s the Trini thing; we followed him out here.”
“You’ve gone out of your fucking mind,” Dino said pleasantly. “I mean, I can see fooling around with this thing to get the girl in the sack, but . . .”
“Dino, this has nothing to do with sex.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Well, not much. I share her outrage that the Feds would let this guy take a walk, that’s all, and it worries me that she’s doing this alone.”
“Well, you’re going to worry yourself right into a federal prison, if you’re not careful. Lance told me about your attempt to bust this guy. You’ve been warned off. Why are you still in this?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m getting near the end of my rope. I’m ready to come back to New York.”
“Call me when you get in. We’ll have dinner, and I’ll straighten you out.” Dino hung up.
Stone put the phone away and looked up and down the hallway. No sign of Holly. He found a courtroom and peeked inside. It was half full of people, but there was no judge on the bench, yet. Holly was sitting in the back row of seats. He went in and joined her.
“What’s happening?”
“Trini and two FBI agents are sitting in the first row, behind the prosecutor’s table,” she said, nodding. “The guy at the table must be Byron Miller.”
Stone looked at the two men sitting at the table, their backs to him. “If the U.S. Attorney himself is trying a case, then it has to be an important one.”
A bailiff stood up and shouted the name of a judge, and the crowd stood until he was seated.
“Mr. Miller, call your next witness,” the judge said.
Miller stood up and called Trini, then waited while he was sworn and sat down. “Mr. Rodriguez,” he said, “were you, until recently, a member of organized crime?”
“Yes,” Trini replied. “Until late last year I worked for a family in Florida.”
“By ‘family’ do you mean a Mafia family?”
“Yes.”
“What were your duties?”
“I arranged loans for applicants and took care of collections.”
“Loans from the Mafia family?”
“Yes.”
“Were these loans made to people who could not obtain them from conventional banks?”
“Yes.”
“Were these loans made at very high interest rates?”
“Yes.”
“Was this, in fact, an illegal loan sharking company?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Did you attend a meeting of organized crime figures on June tenth of last year in Miami, Florida?”
“Yes, I did,” Trini said.
“What was the purpose of the meeting?”
“Some people from New Mexico wanted to get financing for a new racetrack.”
“Was anyone in this courtroom besides yourself present at this meeting?”
“Yes.”
“Could you point out these people?”
Trini pointed at the defense table. “Those two gentlemen right there.”
“Let the record show that Mr. Rodriguez is pointing to the two defendants, Roberto and Chico Rivera.” Miller turned back to Trini. “Did the organization you worked for make a loan to the Rivera brothers?”
“Yes, we did.”
“In what amount?”
“Two million dollars.”
“And what were the funds intended for?”
“To bribe public officials in New Mexico to pave the way for their getting a license to build the racetrack.”
“Did you ever learn if they were successful in bribing public officials in New Mexico?”
“Yes. We learned that they had been successful.”
“Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez.” He turned to the defense table. “Your witness.”
The defense attorney stood up and began to bombard Trini with questions.
Holly leaned over to Stone and whispered, “How long do you think this is going to go on?”
“My guess would be not long. Let’s go outside.”
They got up and went out into the hallway.
“We could take him when he leaves the courthouse,” Holly said.
“Not on federal property,” Stone replied. “Your warrant has no force here, unless you get a federal judge to sign off on it.”
“Then I’ll go to the judge in this case where he’s just testified,” Holly said.
Stone shrugged. “You can try.”
They went back into the courtroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez,” the judge said. “We’ll take a fifteen-minute recess before continuing with the next witness.” He stood up and left the courtroom.
“Let’s go,” Holly said. She approached the bailiff and flashed her badge. “I’d like to see the judge, please.”
“On what business?”
Holly produced her paperwork. “I have a fugitive warrant for a witness in this case.”
“Just a minute.” The bailiff took the warrant and disappeared through a door. Five minutes passed, then the bailiff came back, approached the prosecutor’s table, and spoke with Byron Miller, who rose and followed him toward the judge’s chambers. The bailiff beckoned Holly and Stone to follow.
The judge was sitting at his desk eating a sandwich, his robe thrown over a chair. “You’re Chief Barker?” he said to Holly.
“Yes, Your Honor, and this is my associate, Stone Barrington.”
“This is the United States Attorney, Mr. Byron Miller,” the judge said, nodding toward Miller. “Everybody sit down.”
They sat.
“Mr. Miller, this police officer has presented me with what seems to be a properly executed fugitive warrant for your witness, Mr. Rodriguez, on charges of murder.”
“That’s twelve murders, Judge,” Holly said.
“Are you all done with Mr. Rodriguez?” the judge asked Miller.
“Yes, Judge,” Miller said, “but Mr. Rodriguez has been certified by the attorney general for the Witness Protection Program. He has recently played an important role in breaking up a terrorist ring in New York, and the FBI have informed me that he will be testifying in other trials to come. It’s important that he remain in federal custody until the government is done with him.”
Stone spoke up. “Your Honor, the fact that Mr. Rodriguez has been placed in the Witness Protection Program indicates that, even when the government is done with him, they have no intention of returning him to the Florida jurisdiction for trial on these murder charges. They’re going to let him walk.”
“Is that the case, Mr. Miller?” the judge asked.
“I can’t speak for the attorney general in this matter, Judge.”
“Well, you’ve been speaking for him up until now. Why are you getting so shy all of a sudden?”
“Your Honor, I can only tell you that this witness is crucial to more than one case against defendants who are far worse than he is, and that he needs to be kept in federal custody until he has finished testifying.”
“And how long do you anticipate that will be?”
“I can’t say, Your Honor, since the cases are spread over more than just this jurisdiction.”
The jud
ge flipped through the warrant again. “Well,” he said, “I don’t like the sound of this at all. These are heinous crimes, and the government ought not to be able to ignore them and give this witness protection from being brought to justice. I’m going to authorize Chief Barker to serve her warrant, take Mr. Rodriguez into custody, and return him to her jurisdiction for trial. If the government wants him to testify in further trials, they can apply to the judge in the state case for temporary custody.”
“Thank you, Judge,” Holly said, beaming at him.
“Of course, your order will apply only to this jurisdiction, Your Honor,” Miller said smoothly.
“Yes,” the judge replied. He stamped Holly’s warrant and signed it. “All right, let’s get my court back into session and continue with our trial.”
Everybody stood up and left the chamber.
Holly walked over to the prosecution table, where Byron Miller was talking on his cell phone. “Mr. Miller, where is Rodriguez now?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Miller said.
“He’s staying at your house. Can I find him there?”
“I’m on the phone here,” Miller replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me.”
The bailiff called the case again, and the court stood for the entrance of the judge.
“Let’s get out of here, Holly,” Stone said.
“What have they done with him?” Holly asked when they were in the hallway.
“I don’t know, but we’d better find him before he leaves the jurisdiction,” Stone replied.
41
STONE AND HOLLY went out to the parking lot and looked for the car that had brought Trini to the courthouse. It was nowhere to be seen.
“Let’s go to Miller’s house,” Holly said. “Now that we have a valid warrant, we can get in.”
“Right,” Stone said. He retraced his route to Tano Road and turned down Tano Norte. “I can’t believe we’ve finally got a legal handle on this guy. You said you brought cuffs?”
“Two pair,” Holly said. “I’ll truss him up like a Thanksgiving turkey.”
They arrived at Miller’s house and found the gates still closed. Stone reached out the window and pressed the button on the intercom.
“Yes?” a woman’s voice responded.
“This is the police. Please open the gates.”
There was a buzzing noise, and the gates swung slowly open. Stone parked the car, and they walked to the front door and rang the bell. A moment later a Hispanic woman came to the door.
“Yes?”
“I have a warrant for the arrest of Trini Rodriguez,” Holly said.
“There’s nobody here,” the woman replied.
“How about the guest house?”
“No, I just cleaned it. The three men staying there went to the airport.”
“How long ago?” Holly asked.
“Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
“How do I get to the airport?”
“You go back to Tano Road, then turn right at the intersection, then right again on the four-lane highway. That takes you straight there.”
They ran for the car and sped back toward Tano Road, then found the divided highway. Stone was shortly doing a hundred miles an hour.
Holly sat grimly in the passenger seat, clutching her warrant. “I wish we had a siren,” she said.
“I don’t think this thing would go any faster if we had a siren.”
They followed the signs to the airport, left the car, and ran into the Santa Fe Jet Center, straight through the building and out onto the ramp. The jet they had followed from Teterboro was taxiing away, and Holly started to run after it.
“No, no!” Stone yelled after her, and she stopped. “He’s going to be doing twenty or thirty miles an hour on the ground.” He pointed at the tower. “That’s where we need to go.”
They ran the short distance to the main terminal building and up the stairway to the control tower. At the top they found a locked door and an intercom. Stone rang the bell.
“Yes?”
“This is the police. We have to stop an airplane from taking off.”
The door buzzed open, and the single occupant of the tower stood up. “Let’s see some ID,” he said.
Stone and Holly flashed their badges. “It’s the jet that’s taxiing now,” Stone said. He ran to the window and pointed. The jet was just taxiing onto the runway.
“I just got their IFR release and cleared them for takeoff.”
Stone grabbed a microphone and called the airplane.
“Yes, tower?”
“This is the police. We have a warrant for one of your passengers, Rodriguez. Enter a left downwind for two zero and return to the airport.”
“Stand by, Santa Fe.” There was half a minute’s silence, then the pilot came back. “Sorry, Santa Fe, the FBI has given me orders to continue my flight. Good day.”
“Shit!” Stone said.
“What can we do?” Holly asked.
The tower controller spoke up. “I can call Albuquerque Center on a land line. That’s their handoff controller.”
“It wouldn’t do any good,” Stone said. “They’d get the same answer we did.”
“So we’re screwed?” Holly asked.
“That’s about it,” Stone replied. “Thanks for your help,” Stone said to the controller.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Can you check their flight plan for their destination?”
The controller picked up a tape and consulted it. “Teterboro, New Jersey. Time en route is three hours and fifty minutes.”
“Thanks very much.”
They left the tower and walked back to the car. “So we go back to Teterboro?”
“Yes, but they’re going to be hours ahead of us. Our flight time back is going to be about seven hours, including a fuel stop.”
“So we’ve lost him again.”
“Maybe not completely.” Stone got out his cell phone and called Dino.
“Bacchetti.”
“Dino, it’s Stone.”
“You still in Santa Fe?”
“Yes, but we’ll be heading back today. I wanted to ask a favor.”
“So what else is new?”
“A jet just left Santa Fe with Trini Rodriguez aboard.” He gave Dino the tail number.
“You want me to shoot it down?”
“Not quite. It’s going to be landing in Teterboro in about three and a half hours, stopping at Millionaire. Can you get somebody to meet the jet and follow the occupants to wherever they’re going?”
“I certainly can’t send a cop to New Jersey to do that, but I guess I can do it myself.”
“I’m going to owe you for this one.”
“You sure are. The next four dinners at Elaine’s are yours.”
“Done. You can reach me on my cell phone.” He hung up and started the car. “Dino’s going to meet the flight and see where they take Trini.”
“That’s great news.”
“Let’s go back to Ed’s house and get our clothes, then we’ll follow.”
They drove back to Ed Eagle’s, went into the house, and started packing.
Holly lay down on the bed. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “Can we take a nap first?”
Stone lay down beside her. “So am I.”
They were still sound asleep when Ed Eagle walked in and woke them up. “How’d it go?”
“We both fell asleep,” Stone said.
“You’ve got altitude sickness,” Ed said. “Everybody feels lousy for the first twenty-four hours in Santa Fe. The city is at seven thousand feet of elevation, and my house is at a little over eight thousand. Come have some dinner.”
“We’ve got to get back,” Stone said, trying to clear his head.
“I’m not letting you fly out of here in your condition,” Ed said. “You wouldn’t get there until dawn, anyway.”
Stone’s cell phone vibrated. “Hello?”
“They’re on the ground,” Dino said. �
��I’m on it.”
42
THEY DEPARTED SANTA Fe Airport early the following morning, feeling better but still tired, having thanked Ed Eagle profusely for his help. They followed the same route back, but stopped at Terre Haute, Indiana, to refuel, and it was starting to get dark when they set down at Teterboro. A car service took them back to the city, and they met Dino at Elaine’s for dinner.
“So where did you follow them to?” Stone asked, when they had ordered a drink.
“To an apartment a couple of blocks from here, on Eighty-eighth Street.”
Holly groaned. “Not again. We’ve traveled, what, a couple of thousand miles, and we’re back where we started?”
“So, why don’t you go over there and get him?” Dino asked.
“We tried that before, and we were met by three or four FBI agents with drawn guns.”
“Oh, yeah, Lance mentioned that.”
“Stone,” Holly said, “why can’t we do in New York what we did in Santa Fe?”
“You mean go to a federal judge?”
“Yes. It worked once, didn’t it?”
“To tell you the truth, I was astonished that it worked.”
Dino spoke up. “You mean you got a federal judge to sign off on your warrant?”
“That’s right,” Stone said.
“I’m astonished, too.”
“I think what we would have to do is to force the FBI to show cause why they shouldn’t release him to you. Then there’d be a hearing, where the U.S. Attorney in New York or his staff would argue the motion, and they’d probably win. I think it would be a waste of your time and mine, and speaking of my time, I’ve got to go back to working for a living, instead of chasing Trini Rodriguez all over the country.”
“So you want me to go back to Orchid Beach with my tail between my legs?” Holly asked.
“I wasn’t suggesting a position for your tail, but I think you might have better luck with a federal judge in your own jurisdiction.”
“I think I like Lance’s suggestion better.”
“What, kill Trini?”
“I didn’t hear that,” Dino said.
“I’d love to, really I would,” Holly said brightly.